The Officials

The ‘Peace President’ announced yet more bombing. This time it’s not Venezuela that’s getting the pointy end of his wrath, but Nigeria. Donnie said he targeted “ISIS terrorist scum in Northwestern Nigeria” and yet the oil market hardly reacted. Despite Nigeria producing almost 1.5 mil b/d against Venezuela’s 930 kb/d (per OPEC secondary sources), flat price hasn’t really moved since the close on Wednesday and reached the Asian close at $62.20/bbl. These days, the market wants concrete proof that a policy or event will follow through and have a material impact, so it’s not reacting just yet…

As expected, the market was very quiet today and the European market feels sleepy, keen to get on with stuffing its face with turkey and prices dropped in the European morning, having climbed gradually through the Asian session. Backwardation is back in fashion, though, as all Brent futures spreads through 2026 are either backwardated or flat, recovering after last week’s dip where we saw all but the 2 most prompt spreads slip into contango. Today flat price traded in a tight range around the mid-$62 point, possibly as some traders rushed to get final Christmas gifts sorted

The narrative is changing! The super glut mania is fading as market participants fail to see evidence of the deluge of excess supply flooding the market. OPEC doesn’t have the spare capacity to open the taps much more, as they’ve essentially all been doing as they please for a long time, anyway. Numerous commentators and analysts are now expecting hefty upward revisions to demand and paring back of supply estimates. Of course, much hinges on China continuing to buy for its strategic purposes.

We had a brief stint below the $62 land in Brent flat price, but just after 16:00 GMT the market started moving north again to reach the close at $62.10/bbl. Things are comfy there. The prompt spread moved down in tandem, far below its 54c peak to just 44c, but by the close, it had almost offset any losses and was trading at 50c.

In the week ending 19 December 2025, exchange traded futures volumes showed mixed gains w/w across instruments in the first three tenors. Brent showed moderate gains in the front month, but saw significant increases in March and April contracts which were up by 26.75% and 17.26% respectively.

It “would be smart” for Maduro to leave power, that’s what Trump said overnight. The man is unhinged, but then again, who had piracy in the Caribbean on their 2025 bingo card? “Price-wise, very little of it was factored in two weeks ago,” said a source regarding recent escalations in Venezuela, adding that “this seems like it will become a more nagging issue than people initially expected.” But Trump went further on the oil he stole. “Maybe we’ll sell it, maybe we’ll keep it, maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserve,” he said regarding the seized oil. “We’re keeping the ships also.” Pure piracy

The market hadn’t moved since Wednesday, but it decided to go up today, reaching a peak of $62.16/bbl, +2.7% on the day! And the prompt spread climbed all the way to 50c – on Friday morning we were down at 28c! We just hope you weren’t one of those shorts! As of December 16, positioning of non-commercial accounts in Brent futures and options reached a record high short! Some snap back becomes almost inevitable when positioning becomes so concentrated.

Pirates in the Caribbean episode 2 arrived over the weekend folks – we hope you didn’t miss it, flat price certainly didn’t and went up over two percent. Brent was catapulted north of $61.50 again. The US decided to seize not only one, but two more tankers. The first one, on Saturday, was the Panama-flagged, but Chinese-owned, Centuries (IMO: 9206310), a VLCC carrying 1.8 mill bbls of Venezuelan crude oil bound for China.

The market didn’t react much on the news of the Ukrainian attack in the Mediterranean, but it began to climb in the late London morning, even managing to recover the $60 handle heading into the weekend. It was an upwards boogie into the mid-afternoon and it just about managed to cling on to $60.24/bbl at the close.

The Ukrainians are not shy about blowing dark fleet vessels wherever they are and regardless of the environmental consequences. A ship was attacked by drones near Libya, leading to a fire, but the vessel was unladen. The Qendil (IMO: 9310525) wasn’t sunk but is damaged. And of course, the price did not react 🤣.

Someone keeps adding to the Christmas List. Or perhaps the Naughty List. The EU has added another 41 ships to its rapidly growing fleet of undesirable vessels. If you’re a keen ship tracker, remember to take the reported position of these ships with a healthy serving of scepticism, given their proclivity for evading AIS tracking.

Well, that didn’t last long… Exit Auchincloss and enter O’Neill, the fourth CEO in six years. The famed ‘fundamental reset’ has fundamentally failed as Murray Auchincloss is binned by BP after less than 2 years as CEO. He left in a hurry like some of his scandal-stained predecessors. In the interim, he is being replaced by Carol Howle, BP head of trading. Meg O’Neill will take over in April next year. O’Neill was an Exxon executive and, most recently, ran Woodside Energy.

Now $60 looks like a ceiling. Brent battled to get hold of the handle throughout today’s session, with short-lived success in the late London morning following the rumours of further US sanctions on Russia. But that didn’t last and a gradual grind through the afternoon had the price back down to $59.87/bbl by the European close.